Yiquan Pushing Hands (Tui Shou)

-- A unique Martial Art

     Yiquan Pushing Hands (Tui Shou) has a great value.

     Yiquan Pushing Hands is unique; it was established in skills of combat.

     Master Yao Zongxun once said: "Pushing Hands prepares you for Free Fighting. Yiquan Pushing Hands is a transition of Free Fighting, it enhances Free Fighting." If your Free Fighting skill is lacking then Pushing Hands can help you to improve it .The level of Free Fighting ability can be dramatically influenced by Pushing Hands skill. In fact, Pushing Hands tests your Standing Posts, Testing force, Footwork and Issuing force. It's a kind of basic Yiquan skills. If you want to practice Free Fighting perfectly, you must go through this process.

     Free Fighting has many rules. For example, in a Free Fighting match, you can't hurt your opponent's head; when you and your opponent are clinched together tightly. What should you do? You can't do anything! But Pushing Hands can help to solve this problem. You can use Pushing Hands skill to make your opponent lose his balance.

     Some people think when people doing Pushing Hands that their bodies are tense and they think their bodies must be soft like in Taiji. That is one-sided and superficial point of view. Actual Pushing Hands training goes through three steps: tense – not tense – fluid (flexible), and this cannot be acquired without solid basic Yiquan skills and insistent practice. That is also the process from basic Yiquan Pushing Hands to advanced Yiquan Pushing Hands. Without a good understanding of this training, you cannot study Yiquan very well. People who think naively the training Yiquan Pushing Hands must be soft and flexible at first place are armchair strategists they don't understand the essentials of Yiquan.

     When my farter, Mr. Yao Zongxun, explained the relationship between Yiquan basic skills and Pushing Hands to his students, he once recalled the first time he practiced Pushing Hands with a senior student of Master Wang, Mr. Yang Demao. Mr. Yang beat Mr. Yao with Pushing Hands skills. After that, Mr. Yao did his best to practice the basic sills of Yiquan and Pushing Hands 10 hours a day. After half a year, Mr. Yao's Pushing Hands skill improved dramatically. See from the experience of Mr. Yao, the basic skills of Yiquan is the guarantee of achieving advanced level of Pushing Hands skill. Advanced Pushing Hands, consists of agile Footwork, ever changing of hand techniques, and a stable body; fast exertion of force with small movement; you can freely and easily unbalance opponent at a certain point; or control; or attack; When facing a highly skilled opponent in a Free Fighting match, if you are not careful, you are at risk of fatal strike at anytime.

     Some people may ask: "Since Pushing Hands is so powerful, but how can I use it in Free Fighting?"  In a real fighting, when you have physical contact with your opponent, first, you can use Pushing Hands skill to make your opponent lose his/her balance in a second, and then strike him forcefully with any part of your body applicable, eventually get your opponent lose his/her fight effectiveness. Yiquan is different from Thai Boxing or American Boxing etc. because its basic, fundamental skill emphasis at spiritual sense and coordination of each part of human body -- Yiquan combines theory and ideas with the training of the entire body.

     Yiquan trains you make use of hand, arm, head, shoulder, elbow, hipbone, knee, and foot almost every part of your body to exert force, every part of your body just like a spring. With this skill, you can defeat your opponent at close range, even if you are clinched together tightly. This is Yiquan's special fighting style. We can say that Pushing Hands is a magic weapon to win in a hand-to-hand fight and get your opponent down instantly. In the 1930s, Master Wang Xiangzhai beat Hungarian Yingge (name in Chinese pinyin transcription), the featherweight boxing world champion, with Yiquan Pushing Hands. During the fight, Master Wang controlled Yingge while the moment he touched his forearm, immediately followed with a rapid exerting force to shake him out. In the 1940s, Mr. Yao Zongxun beat a kung Fu teacher, in the same way, Mr. Yao controlled his opponent first, and immediately a downwards punch efficiently finished the fight. These two examples fully demonstrated the effectiveness of Pushing Hands in Free Fight. If you want to master skillful Pushing Hands in Free Fighting, you must diligently practice the fundamentals of Yiquan. It is a fantasy to think that you can achieve a high level in Yiquan without serious study and hard work.

     People who think Pushing Hands is useless actually don't get the real meaning of Yiquan Pushing Hands. They are not trained with the true and systematical methods, never been through any contest of Pushing Hands and Free Fighting and only talk about ideas. They may not beat a strong person get used to fight, let alone a professional Yiquan opponent.

     Once you understand the relationship between Pushing Hands and Free Fighting, you must incorporate it into your training. The opposability of Pushing Hands must be practiced through daily training; the Gymnastics in pairs like Pushing Hands training is definitely unwanted. Of course, the opposability of Pushing Hands is based on the correct and systematic training and basic Yiquan skills.

     During the Pushing Hands practice, both sides must be concentrated to feel and sense opponent's force. When you see an opening in your opponents' defense, you must seize this opportunity to strike him instantly using the skills you have previously learned. At the beginning stage of Pushing Hands training, your will feel your body are tense and stiff, and you will unconsciously counteract with force. These will cause the state of "bulls pushing" with your partner. But don't worry, along with improvement of your force and skill the clumsy counteract force will gradually disappear, you will be able to sense your opponent's force correctly and react to it quickly. At that level, it is time  enhance the opposability of Pushing Hands. At the moment of physical contact of both sides, combine hitting and issuing (of force) which is already in the category of Free Fighting. Therefore, we can see that advanced Pushing Hands is Free Fighting.

     Pushing Hands training can be done in two ways: one is without protective equipment, only issuing force of hand and arm are allowed (pushing), no punching or hitting. Another one is with protective equipment, this kind just like normal Pushing Hands contest, both pushing and hitting can be applied, this way the possibilities of Pushing Hands can be fully explored. Beijing Yiquan Research Institute held many Pushing Hands matches which got very good effect and also improved the Yiquan practitioners’ Free Fighting ability.  The author thinks Yiquan Pushing Hands should be introduced widely overseas.

     I would like to discuss my opinions of Yiquan Pushing Hands with all Yiquan friends. The quality of our Kung Fu is the most important thing. Even if you have a good understanding of martial art theory, without a true grasp of Yiquan, it means nothing.

     After many years of Yiquan practice, I have found that Free Fighting ability is a basic measure of martial art skills. As fellow Yiquan practitioners, we should endeavor to help each other and mutually encourage one another to improve our Yiquan skills.